Comedy Scovel first performed comedy in December 2003 at an
open mic night in
Spartanburg, South Carolina. He had just graduated from college and was working as a cameraman at
WSPA, a local television station. The following year, he moved to
Washington D.C., where he performed for three years. He then moved to New York City, where he performed for three years until he moved to Los Angeles, where he now lives. In 2010, he performed his first set for a late night show on
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The following year, Scovel performed on
Conan with comedian
Jon Dore using the premise that the show had accidentally booked two comedians; Scovel would go on to perform on and be interviewed by Conan many times in the following decade. Scovel also released his first stand-up album with
Stand Up! Records,
Dilation. Scovel and the record were named by
The Huffington Post as one of fourteen in their "Guide To New Comedy Albums of 2011". In 2012, Scovel was named among the 10 Comics to Watch by
Variety magazine. In April of that year, his set was featured on Comedy Central's
The Half Hour. In 2013, he performed a show at the performance venue at
Third Man Records,
Jack White's record label. The live show was recorded to tape and transferred to vinyl. There is no digital version of this recording. White would later executive produce Scovel's 2017 special for Netflix. In 2015, Scovel taped his first hour-long stand-up special at the Woolfe Street Playhouse in
Charleston, South Carolina; the special was aptly named
Rory Scovel: The Charleston Special. In 2017, his next special,
Rory Scovel Tries Stand-Up for the First Time, was released by Netflix. Scovel has opened for comedians such as
Louis C.K.,
Nick Swardson, and
Daniel Tosh. He has performed at the
Montreal Just for Laughs Festival, the
FYF Fest in
Los Angeles, the Vancouver Comedy Festival, the Del Close Improv Marathon in New York, the
Bumbershoot Festival in
Seattle, and the Chicago Improv Festival. In a February 2020 interview, Scovel disclosed that the show had been produced and was looking for a
distributor. On May 6, 2020, Comedy Central announced that
Robbie would premiere later that week. The show premiered on May 7, 2020, at which time Comedy Central released the series in its entirety on its streaming platform and YouTube.
Robbie is Comedy Central's first
binge-release. Recently, Scovel played the lead in the
Chris Blake quarantine comedy,
Distancing Socially filmed remotely using the iPhone 11. The film was acquired and released by Cinedigm in October 2021.
Podcasts Since 2018, Scovel has co-hosted
The Pen Pals Podcast with fellow comedian
Daniel Van Kirk. Scovel has appeared on several popular
podcasts, including ''
Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend'' with
Conan O'Brien,
Comedy Bang! Bang! with
Scott Aukerman,
Doug Loves Movies with
Doug Benson,
Sklarbro Country with
The Sklar Brothers,
The Nerdist Podcast with
Chris Hardwick,
You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes,
Maximum Fun's
Stop Podcasting Yourself,
The Dead Authors Podcast with
Paul F. Tompkins,
The Dollop live at the 2016 Riot LA Comedy Festival with
Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds,
The Todd Glass Show, and
WTF with Marc Maron,
Mega, and
Films to Be Buried With with Brett Goldstein. == Personal life ==